Osman Waqialla

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Lore & Background

Osman Waqialla was born in Rufa'a, in Central Sudan, Al Jazirah state on the banks of the Blue Nile. He graduated from the School of Design, Gordon Memorial College, Khartoum, Sudan in 1945. In 1946, he received a scholarship and moved to England to join Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts in London, finishing his studies in 1949. Later he moved to Cairo, Egypt, where he trained as a calligrapher under the master Sayyid Muhammed Ibrahim (died 1994) at the Cairo School of Arabic Calligraphy. During his time at Camberwell and in Cairo, Waqialla explored the expressive and compositional possibilities of Arab calligraphic form in his paintings, becoming one of the first artists to free Arab calligraphy from its historical relationship with the sacred Islamic texts and to propose it as a veritable resource for Modernist art. At the time, this was a revolutionary idea. After completing his studies, he moved back to Sudan at the beginning of the 1950s, where he taught at the College of Fine and Applied Art. In the early 1960s, some of his students—Ahmed Mohammed Shibrain (b. 1931), Ibrahim el-Salahi (b. 1930), and Tag el-Sir Ahmed (b. 1933)—joined in creating a new Sudanese modernist art movement, the Khartoum School. From 1954 to 1964, he worked in his Studio Osman for graphic design, known as a meeting place for artists and intellectuals in Khartoum. Apart from his paintings, he wrote poetry and articles about culture. In 1956, he designed the first banknotes of the newly independent state. In 1967, he moved back to London and worked as a consultant calligrapher for the firm of banknote makers De La Rue. Two years after his final return to Sudan in 2005, he died on 4 January 2007, aged 81.

Reader's Guide

Waqialla's significance lies in his pioneering role in the Hurufiyya movement, using Arabic calligraphy as a modern, non-religious graphic form. He was part of a group of Sudanese artists, later known as the Khartoum School, who wanted to avoid Western art concepts and were searching for a new artistic identity drawn from their own culture and heritage. By this, he was one of the first artists of the 20th century to explore modern forms of Arabic calligraphy, integrating African cultural and Islamic visual traditions into contemporary Sudanese compositions. He used Arabic letter forms and filled the space between them with splashes of colour. His works have been exhibited in Africa, the Middle East, the United States and Europe, including the touring exhibition Seven Stories about Modern Art in Africa, which began at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1995. The same year, he participated in a group exhibition at the Barbican Centre's The Curve Gallery, called Signs, Traces and Calligraphy, curated by Rose Issa. His work can be found in collections of the National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C., the British Museum, London and in many private collections. The bulk of his work remains in Sudan. He should be credited for liberating Arabic calligraphy from its traditional boundaries of the sacred text, and for his daring explorations of calligraphic expressions in non-traditional secular Arabic texts in both poetry and prose.

Did You Know?

• Waqialla designed the first banknotes of the newly independent Sudan in 1956.
• He trained as a calligrapher under master Sayyid Muhammed Ibrahim at the Cairo School of Arabic Calligraphy.
• In 1967, he moved to London and worked as a consultant calligrapher for the banknote maker De La Rue.
• His students at the College of Fine and Applied Art included Ahmed Mohammed Shibrain, Ibrahim el-Salahi, and Tag el-Sir Ahmed, who helped form the Khartoum School.
• The bulk of his work remains in Sudan.